Judged For Voting Frivolously

“I can’t get that Trump woman out of my head,” my son told me later. “She was so nice in other ways. But she acted like politics is a game, not something that affects real life.”

There’s no more reliable marker of privilege than believing, or pretending to believe, that politics has no impact on real life. As a black male, my son is growing up to face dangers that his seatmate’s choice of president has increased. He will inherit a world shaped by a man whose core values are rotten. Trump may be incompetent, but he’s been able to do a lot of damage already.

My son said he thought the seatmate was a little embarrassed by her Trump vote. She told him she didn’t want to be judged for it, any more than she wanted to be judged for being from Kansas. And I agree ― nobody should be judged for where they come from. But if there were ever a fair basis on which to judge someone, it’s on the actions they take in situations that affect other people. There’s no more obvious example than voting.